


You.

by budget



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: 7x11, 7x11 explanation, 7x12, Alternate Ending, Bipolar Disorder, Character motivation, Ignore s8, M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 09:54:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15704865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/budget/pseuds/budget
Summary: "You can’t pinpoint exactly when it was that you stopped beingyou."





	You.

**Author's Note:**

> An attempt to understand Ian at the end of season 7, ignoring s8 entirely.

You can’t pinpoint exactly when it was that you stopped being _you_.  It might have been at Basic Training, before everything collapsed around you, forcing you to flee into the dark, furtive oblivion of clubs and drugs and anonymity.  Once, a lifetime ago, you were so confident, so sure, wide open and upright. The disease robbed you of your calm certainty that you would make something of your life, that you would find a life worth living with Mickey, that you were deserving of his love. 

If he could see through the endless cycles of mania and depression, Mickey would have discovered there was nothing left that made you _you_. You’d become a shell, completely drained by the ceaseless fluctuations in mood and energy that left you wondering where _you_ had gone off to, and if you would see _you_ again. 

For a while, you turned the search for _you_ outward, hinging it all on Mickey, relying on his shortcomings to allow you to find your footing and your courage. When Mickey gave into all your demands, it was almost as though he was taking something back, sequestering your assuredness and nerve until you were empty of _you_ again. 

It wasn’t just the meds that made you feel hollow, and it wasn’t just Monica that made you feel unlovable. The clichéd saying has it all wrong – it should go ‘You can’t love someone else until you _know_ yourself.’ Mickey poured all his love into a husk of who you had once been, and you can’t keep trapping him with this memory of a whole person. You can remember what it felt like when you both ran down that alley breathless and in love, and the blood pounding in your ears was a mantra repeating _Young. Now. Free_. Trying to keep up with the ever-changing moods and coping with the loss of your purpose and self makes you doubt there’s anything left inside to love now.

You try twice to give Mickey freedom. The first time you tried to set him free, when you forced the closet open for him, he got trapped by your downward spiral, your descent into the disease.  The second time, you give him the chance to walk away. You try to explain that he used to love _you_ , but you don’t know how to explain that this _me_ isn’t the same as before.  You’re not broken, you’re just changed into something, someone dead inside, unfixable. That second time you try to free him he gets locked in a prison cell. It’s your fault. You refuse to think about it.  It’s a choice between denial and letting the rage and grief and guilt push you to the dark place you know you’re capable of visiting where you’ll put an end to all this shit.

Since then, you’ve pulled yourself deep inward. Fiona and Lip don’t understand, and there’s no point trying to explain the sense of loss that tugs at the back of your brain even on the best days. You meet Caleb while just looking to fuck and fight, like Mickey did when he was still lost and hollow and fucked for life. Caleb is solid, cultured, with sculptures and a career, but your weak attempts at opening up, pinning your inadequacies on Mickey, don’t protect you from being lied to, being manipulated. In the aftermath, you teach yourself to play your cards closer to your chest.

With Trevor, it starts so casual. You like the electronic music that fills your head with mind-numbing bass beats instead of longing or nostalgia or any emotion at all. You lie about bottoming to avoid the vulnerability that comes with those memories. You bottomed for men who took advantage of you, who drugged you, who didn’t love you at all.  

When Monica comes back and you and Trevor and Monica yell at each other in the street, you decide to pull inward again. Trevor doesn’t know you or the bipolar nightmare or the past life you had or when you were free and easy and open and in love, and you can close yourself off entirely and he doesn’t even notice.

When the detective comes to your door, you feel it. That rush like before, before the disease and the many betrayals and the agony of changing into someone you no longer recognize, washes over you, leaving you raw and shaken.  You haven’t felt anything like that since _then_ , since Mickey and you fought and kissed in the dugout before everything got torn to bits for the last time. 

Life accelerates with a phone call and a breathless exchange of words, and suddenly you’re tossed from a van, disoriented and sore. You see him standing there, in the flesh and everything. You move so close you can almost taste his skin, and the scenery starts to blur. The bleachers and the Mexican gang banger and the smell of cigarettes all fade out in the periphery.  Mickey is there and he’s real and he’s out, and for a second the rush returns. The rush warms your stomach, it’s the feeling that makes your breath catch in your throat and makes you feel alive and young and unscarred.  

When you kiss him at the docks, you’re searching him for the pieces of who you both were.  You let the want and the need for his soft, pale skin override your common sense and your guilt and your regret.  It’s like living out your memories, only darker.  The playfulness is replaced by desperation, the hopefulness by a growing cloud of impending loss. You fuck hard and fast, like you’re running out of time, like you’re chasing and clawing at something fleeting.

Breathing deep into his neck as he sleeps, you search your brain, trying to grasp how you felt before, all muscle and swagger and smirk, knowing full well that you loved Mickey while you played it off so nonchalantly to Carl. _I like how he smells._

“ ‘M I gonna see you again?”

You answer the best way you can, pressing your mouth silently against his, because long ago your lips stopped saying all the fucked up things in your head. You wouldn’t even know where to start, and it’s safer for everyone this way. Mickey shouldn’t have to know that even when things are looking up you still feel detached, floating in space, somedays still wanting to cease to exist. Saying the three words he deserves to hear might open the floodgates, and it doesn’t feel worth the risk. So you kiss him deep and hard and try to pour it out through your mouth in a different way.  It’s changed from the rushed passion of last night. This time, you’re trying to give him what you dug out of the cobwebbed corners of your mind, what’s left of _you_.

Back home, you force yourself to stare in the mirror. Sometimes you get nervous to look in your own eyes.  You don’t recognize that person, he’s not vibrant and sure and real.  He’s got a messed-up brain and a closed-off heart, and Mickey deserves more.

Staring at those green eyes looking back at you, a glint of your former bravery returns. For the third time, you’re going to try to give Mickey freedom, since there’s nothing left of _you_ to give.  He’ll keep coming back to you, instinctively you know this, you know how he’ll put himself at dire risk just for a moment with you. If you could just get him there safely, prevent him from doing something too impulsive, too stupid, too risky. It’s your homage to the past, to your former self and past trajectory, to the freedom your love once imbued you both with. 

Even when you say “let’s ride” you sense he doesn’t trust you all the way, you think he might know you’re going to leave again, but you’ll both play along until one of you chickens out.  He keeps pushing, putting more and more out there like a dare. _Us. Fuck I missed you._ He’s begging you. _Show yourself Ian, show who you are, what you feel._   But you know better than that, your brain is a dangerous thing and it’s best to keep thoughts locked up tight.  Just get him there to Mexico. Just make sure he’s safe. A few times you slip, the rush comes in and fills your guts, makes you buzz down to your toes, makes your heart feel full and jumpy. Being next to Mickey, your smirk sometimes just unfolds into a real smile, the wide toothy one that used to come so easy.  _Focus on the task at hand, don’t fall in too deep.  Set him free._

At the border, you take a deep breath and say out loud what you’ve been repeating in your head for days. 

“I can’t.” _Find myself. I can’t remember what it’s like to be real. I can’t be the person you deserve._

“This isn’t me anymore.” _I haven’t been me in years, I think the me you loved might be gone forever._

“I love you.” This one tastes strange coming out of your mouth, and you think he didn’t need to hear it after all, because he no longer believes it’s true. He challenges it, and you don’t rise to meet the challenge.  You don’t get in the damn car. 

This time, kissing him is a goodbye and a dirge and a prayer. You try to stay in this moment. You try to cling to all the moments of the past, all your lost joy and hope and love. You try to push all of that into him, all these feelings you didn’t think you’d be able to feel again. After the diagnosis, or after this, or after him.

Somehow he knows, he knows this whole charade of a trip was really an affirmation of love.  He’s kissing you back because he knows you were never going to make it all the way. You’re trying to give him a chance at more. You’re not all there anymore, and eventually the cracks would show and then become too much to bear, even in the paradise Mexico promises. Your heart flutters at the final ‘fuck you.’ It isn’t until you see him cross safely that it occurs to you that you’ll never see him again and with him goes the last bit of _you_ that you recognize.

Back in Chicago, you stay tightly closed.  Lying to your siblings about where you’ve been.  Not shedding tears for Monica like you might have done before. You eulogize with some bullshit words up there, and you sit and feel somehow both leaden and like nothing is tethering you to the earth. And fucking Frank starts talking, and to your shock some nonsense he spews clicks into place. The rush, the love, sure, you felt that with Mick, no one before or since, no one ever again like that. But he also looks at you and he tells you you’re strong and brave. 

It’s as if the bullshit broken genes that Monica gave you might be inextricable from the things that made you _you_ once, and it’s all there _._ And maybe Mickey saw all of that. He used to love you, and then he kept loving you, in some unconditional dynamic and completely unfathomable way. The same way you loved, no, still love his dichotomies and contradictions, coarseness and tactlessness and selflessness and openness, all at once. It was real, in spite of the brokenness, and maybe more so because of it.

Fiona asks if it’s fixable. She means with Trevor, but you think about all of the other stuff. Yourself. Mickey. Maybe it’s fixable. Before you were so sure it was broken beyond repair. You’ll have to see. You’ve changed and morphed and grown and shrunk in so many ways, and it’s all _you._  

“I guess the motherfucker really did love the crazy bitch.”

You glance at Fiona, smirking inward at yourself. Aloud, your response seems like a question, but privately, it’s a confession. “ _You didn’t know that.”_

_You couldn’t be sure. But you know now._

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic. I feel like Ian constantly gets a bad rap for how he treated Mickey, but I feel like I can relate to what he’s said and done. My own mental health crisis drew into question who I was and how I saw myself, and until you sort that out, it can be pretty hard to feel loved or understood or deserving of love. 
> 
> I wanted to try to get at what I think Ian might be going through, and although I do blame lazy and inconsistent writing for a lot of the Ian s6/s7 nonsense, I relate enormously to s5x12. I also think that without intensive therapy, that sort of identity crisis doesn’t heal itself.
> 
> Thanks for reading! A great tune that feels pretty in line with my vibes and perspective for this is Paul by Big Thief. 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fbA_agbrOg
> 
> “Paul, I know you said that you’d take me any way I came or went  
> But I’ll push you from my brain  
> See, you’re gentle baby  
> I couldn’t stay, I’d only bring you pain”


End file.
